--Harold Relyea, chief specialist on presidential directives at theCongressional Research Service, in an interview with EIR.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was founded during thepresidency of one Trilateral Commission member, Jimmy Carter, and itseems increasingly likely that its fundamental purpose -- to seizecontrol of the reins of government through emergency fiat -- will berealized under the presidency of another, George Bush.

The Trilateral link is no accident. Together with the other leadingEastern Establishment think tank, the New York Council on ForeignRelations (CFR), the Trilateral Commission effectively brought FEMAinto existence.

The leading theoreticians behind the creation of FEMA were SamuelHuntington, a National Security Council consultant under Carter, andZbigniew Brzezinski, who served as Carter's national security advisor.Before that, Brzezinski was executive director at the TrilateralCommission, a "New Ager" who envisioned a "technetronic society" inthe United States. Nominally a Democrat, Brzezinski neverthelessbecame a leading adviser on strategic policy to George Bush's 1988campaign, and continues to serve as an informal consultant to the Bushadministration. Huntington is currently a member of the FEMA AdvisoryBoard. Both Huntington and Brzezinski belong to the CFR.

FEMA was established in March 1979 by presidential Review Memorandum32, with the mandate to maintain "the continuity of government" (COG)during a national security emergency. PRM 32 bypassed the U.S.Constitution, and awarded power to the _unelected_ officials at theNational Security Council to direct U.S. government operations byemergency decree. By placing FEMA under the NSC's control, Huntington,Brzezinski, et al., turning the NSC into a shadow technocraticdictatorship, waiting for a real or manufactured crisis to seizecontrol of the country.

Although FEMA was sold to Congress and the public as the vehiclethrough which the United States could mount an adequate, centralizedresponse to natural and other disasters, the agency has consistentlyfailed to fulfill that purpose. In its last major interventions, in1989's San Francisco earthquake and Hurricane Hugo, FEMA's ineptnessand bungling enraged disaster victims and local officials. FEMA wasmore interested in psychologically profiling the population's responseto the disasters, than it was in assisting their physical survival.That was typical of FEMA's 10-year record, which began with itspanic-mongering handling of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in1979.

Burying the Constitution////////////////////////

FEMA has proven by it's own actions that it is not a disasterpreparedness agency. Its true purpose is found in the 1970s policydecisions of the CFR and the Trilateral Commission, decisions whichushered in the "post-industrial society" and "limits to growth" erawhich brought the United States into the current depression.

It is clear from viewing these policy decisions, that theEstablishment had made a conscious decision to deal with economiccontraction and concomitant social unrest by resorting to fascistemergency rule and other forms of "fascism with a democratic face."

In one of the earliest Trilateral Commission reports, "The Crisis ofDemocracy," published in 1975, Huntington demanded that democraticgovernment be curbed in times of economic crisis. "We have come torecognize that there are potentially desirable limits to economicgrowth," he stated. "There are also potentially desirable _limits tothe indefinite extension of political democracy_. . . . A governmentwhich lacks authority. . .will have little ability, short orcataclysmic crisis to _impose on its people the sacrifice which may benecessary_" (emphasis added).

In 1973, the Council of Foreign Relations launched its "1980sProject," which it called the "largest single effort in our 55-yearhistory." By its own account, the 1980s Project was aimed at"describing how world trends might be steered toward a particulardesirable future outcome." Zbigniew Brzezinski belonged to the 1980sProject's governing body, and Samuel Huntington served on itscoordinating group.

Among the most important products of the project was _Alternatives toMonetary Disorder_, by the late Fred Hirsch, senior adviser to theInternational Monetary Fund. Hirsch wrote: "A degree of controlleddisintegration in the world of economy is a legitimate objective forthe 1980s and may be order. A central normative problem for theinternational economic order in the years ahead is how to ensure thatthe disintegration indeed occurs in a controlled way and does notrather spiral into damaging restrictionism."

"Controlled disintegration" became the policy of Jimmy Carter'sFederal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, whose high interest rateswrecked the U.S. industrial and farm base during the Carter and Reaganyears.

Another Key 1980s Project document was _International DisasterRelief_, by Stephen Green. It predicted that the future will bringabout "megadisasters" that will "create conditions of politicalinstability and, in all likelihood, of conflict, which will furthererode the capacity of societies to cope with natural disasters."

Green recommended rapid implementation of new disaster preparednessefforts. He called for the creation of a central, global agency, underthe United Nations, with a mandate to intervene in disastersituations, despite opposition from local governments. "Such a shift,"he wrote, "would reflect increasingly widespread _dissatisfaction withthe constraints posed by the recognition of sovereign nationaljurisdictions" and the "abstract notion of national sovereignty"(emphasis added).

"Disaster relief" thus became an excuse for tossing out existing formsof government which stand in the way of fascist economic policies (forwhich "sacrifice" and "controlled disintegration" are merelyeuphemisms) which the Eastern Establishment has decided must beimposed.

Oliver North and FEMA/////////////////////

FEMA's powers have been enhanced during the Reagan and Bushadministrations to the point that the agency is now positioned to takeover the country in the event of a national security crisis, such as awar with Iraq or an interruption of oil-imports.

A preview of FEMA dictatorship can be found in the Iran-Contra affair.One of the key components of the FEMA apparatus is a group of 100persons it has positioned throughout the government bureaucracy. Knownas the "continuity of government" (COG) structure, these 100individuals are charged with running government departments in timesof crisis. One member of this group was none other than Oliver North-- whom President Bush called a "national hero."

Bush was at the center of both the Iran-Contra fiasco, and the broaderFEMA-linked crisis management apparatus set up during the Reaganyears. In early 1982, Reagan created the Special Situations Group(SSG), designating Vice President Bush as chairman.

In May 1982, the Reagan administration is sued a memorandum whichannounced that the SSG "is charged, _inter alia_ with formulatingplans in anticipation of crisis. In order to facilitate this crisispre-planned responsibility, a Standing Crisis Pre-Planning Group(CPPG) is hereby established."

North was assigned to the CPPG -- and later helped to write the 1984"Rex" exercise for police-state rule in the United States.

Through an outgrowth of this structure, the Iran-Contra controllerswielded extraordinary power and ran various foreign and domesticinitiates, including the overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos ofthe Philippines through what became the Project Democracy apparatus,the Iran-Contra affair, and the government's effort to jail LyndonLaRouche, who was rightly seen as a major threat to the FEMA network's"government by fiat" scheme. (As EIR has previously reported, BusterHorton, the foreman of the jury which found LaRouche guilty ontrumped-up charges in December 1988, belonged to the same 100-man COGstructure as North.)

On July 22, 1982, President Reagan issued his National SecurityDecision Directive 47 to complement the operations of the SSG andCPPG. Titled "Emergency Mobilization Preparedness," NSDD 47 definedthe responsibilities of federal departments and branches of the U.S.government to respond to a national security crisis or domesticemergency. The president charged the Emergency MobilizationPreparedness Board with implementing the programs detailed in thedirective, which included a restriction of civil rights, bordering onexplicit police-state measures (see accompanying article --"12656.TXT").

As one of his first acts in office, Bush issued National SecurityDirective 1, which boosted the powers of the National SecurityCouncil, the body that runs FEMA.

Bush also stacked the FEMA leadership with "old boys" from theintelligence and covert operations networks, among them JerryJennings, who was confirmed as a FEMA deputy director in May.Jenning's background includes nearly a decade of White House serviceas an advisor to the President's national security adviser under fouradministrations, beginning in 1973. Before that, he worked with theCIA in the Far East during the gear up for the Vietnam War (1965-68),and for the FBI, where he specialized in drugs.

EIR Nov 23, 1990 (pg.23)------------------------------------------------(This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to thePatriot FTP site by S.P.I.R.A.L., the Society for the Protection of Individual Rights and Liberties. E-mail alex@spiral.org)